STRATEGY | GROWTH | TALENT | OPERATIONS | M&A
TALENT READINESS PRACTICE
Build Your Leaders. Strengthen Your Bench.
Whether you're building your bench, preparing for scale, or navigating significant change, we help you put the right people in the right seats—and prepare them for what’s next.
THE STAGE 5 TALENT ECOSYSTEM: A fully integrated talent system — not isolated HR programs. Stage 5 frameworks and tools work together to build leadership depth, support strategic execution, and reduce talent-related risk as your business scales.
- Organizational Talent Assessment & Roadmap O-T-A-R™: An objective diagnostic of talent capability, role clarity, and organizational readiness. O-T-A-R™ identifies critical talent gaps and produces a clear, actionable roadmap to strengthen the organization.
- Success Planning with BenchBuilt™: A core framework within our Talent Practice, BenchBuilt™ helps organizations deliberately build bench strength and succession plans across near-, mid-, and long-term horizons — ensuring future leaders are ready before they are needed.
- Leadership Coaching with FORGE™: Another cornerstone of the Stage 5 Talent Ecosystem, FORGE™ is our proven coaching and development framework for current and emerging leaders. FORGE focuses on judgment, accountability, and leadership behaviors that scale with the business.
- Talent Toolkit: We leverage a curated set of best-in-class talent and HR tools to support assessment, performance management, compensation, and organizational design, culture, and change management — all selected to reinforce the broader talent system.
Let's Discuss Your Talent Gaps
O-T-A-R™ Organizational Talent Assessment & Roadmap
A rigorous, end-to-end evaluation of your people, structure, and leadership capability.
The Stage 5 Talent Practice leverages O-T-A-R™, a comprehensive assessment and roadmap framework that provides deep, objective insight into your leadership team, organizational design, talent gaps, compensation alignment, and overall readiness to execute strategy.
Using a combination of proprietary methods and best-in-class tools — including Leadership 9-Box analysis, capability mapping, role clarity diagnostics, performance system evaluation, and more, O-T-A-R™ produces a prioritized, actionable talent roadmap. The result is not just insight, but a clear plan to strengthen leadership capacity and build a scalable organizational foundation.
What O-T-A-R™ Delivers
- A clear view of leadership capability and readiness for the next stage
- Optimization of organizational structure to support execution
- Early identification of talent gaps and leadership risk
- Alignment of roles, expectations, decision rights, and accountability
- Evaluation of compensation and performance systems against strategy
- Visibility into bench depth and the health of the leadership pipeline
- A prioritized talent roadmap explicitly tied to business strategy
BenchBuilt™ — Succession Planning System
Build Leaders Systematically
BenchBuilt™ is Stage 5’s business-first succession and leadership readiness system designed to ensure continuity as organizations grow, change, or face unexpected transitions.
Unlike traditional succession planning, BenchBuilt™ goes beyond naming successors on paper. It objectively evaluates leadership readiness, identifies capability gaps, and builds deliberate development paths—so leaders are prepared before they are needed.
BenchBuilt™ makes bench strength visible, current, and actionable by linking leadership readiness directly to role criticality, strategic priorities, and enterprise risk.
BenchBuilt™ integrates seamlessly with FORGE™ coaching and O-T-A-R™ role clarity to close readiness gaps and strengthen execution where it matters most.
See complete details on BenchBuilt™
FORGE™ Leadership Development & Coaching System
Developing Leaders Through FORGE™
FORGE™ is Stage 5’s business-aligned leadership coaching framework designed to strengthen judgment, improve execution, and scale leadership capability as organizations grow and change.
Unlike mentoring or consulting, FORGE™ is intentionally coaching-first. It focuses on how leaders think, decide, work with others, and act under real-world pressure—developing the judgment and team engagement skills required to lead effectively through ambiguity, complexity, and change.
At the center of FORGE™ is a practical, role-driven Individual Development Plan (IDP). Each plan translates development into execution by combining targeted skills, critical competencies, and real business experiences—ensuring leaders are ready before they are needed.
FORGE™ can be deployed as a standalone engagement or integrated with BenchBuilt™ and O-T-A-R™ to close leadership gaps and accelerate readiness for critical roles.
See complete details for FORGE™
STAGE 5 TALENT READINESS TOOLKIT
Assessments
Coaching & Development
Succession Planning
Leadership & Behavioral Assessments
We use practical, industry-recognized assessments to build communication, emotional intelligence, and leadership effectiveness.
Tools include:
- DiSC®
- Hogan Leadership Suite
- CliftonStrengths®
- EQ-i 2.0
- Thomas-Kilmann (TKI)
Succession Planning
Coaching & Development
Succession Planning
Organizational Succession Planning Tools
These tools help evaluate leaders objectively, identify successors, and measure bench strength with clarity.
Tools include:
- Leadership 9-Block
- Successor Readiness Mapping
- Lominger Competencies
- HiPo Identification Framework
- Critical Role Risk Assessment
Coaching & Development
Coaching & Development
Organizational Structure
Leadership Development & Coaching Methods
Structured development experiences build real-world leadership capability aligned to business needs.
Tools include:
- Executive & emerging-leader development programs
- Mentorship programs
- Cross-functional stretch assignments
- Leadership shadowing
- Personal leadership operating systems
Organizational Structure
Organizational Structure
Organizational Structure
Organizational Structure & Accountability Tools
These frameworks bring clarity to decision rights, role expectations, and team alignment.
Tools include:
- Org structure & span-of-control analysis
- Role charters
- RACI / DACI decision frameworks
- Accountability maps
- Team effectiveness assessments
Performance Management
Organizational Structure
Performance Management
Performance & Development Planning Tools
These tools create measurable leadership growth and strengthen communication, decision-making, and discipline.
Tools include:
- Individual Development Plans (IDPs)
- Personal Development Objectives (PDOs)
- 360° feedback
- SBI / Feedforward coaching models
- Progress tracking & milestone mapping
Culture Building
Organizational Structure
Performance Management
Culture, Engagement & Change Tools
We help teams adopt new behaviors, align around values, and maintain engagement during change.
Tools include:
- Culture mapping
- Engagement & pulse surveys
- Change readiness assessments
- Leadership climate scans
- Team norms & operating agreements